


To Something Good

by magikfanfic



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Self-Esteem Issues, ben is dead but i didn't tag it major character death because well. it's expected, for the purposes of this story ben is able to recollect books he's read word for word, i mostly just enjoy writing these siblings, other hargreeves mentioned but not present, probably not canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 19:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18723184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: Ben starts a countdown when they’re ten. It’s nothing much, just small vertical lines drawn on the wall under the poster Mom got him, the one that’s basically a reading list of what’s considered great literature.





	To Something Good

Ben starts a countdown when they’re ten. It’s nothing much, just small vertical lines drawn on the wall under the poster Mom got him, the one that’s basically a reading list of what’s considered great literature. During the day, he’ll mark off the books as he finishes them: Huckleberry Finn, Call of the Wild, Walden, escalating to harder things such as War and Peace, The Scarlet Letter, Lolita. Then ones he adds himself in his neat, steady hand: Mrs. Dalloway, Beloved, Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fistfight in Heaven, Joy Luck Club, entries that take the list away from the dominating voices of dead white men. Then at night, when he thinks everyone else is asleep--except for Klaus who barely ever sleeps, trips, crawls, slinks into the rest of their rooms to talk in murmured whispers either to them or to whatever else manages to find him--he adds the marks to the wall itself. 

“What’s that for?” Klaus asks one night when he’s stretched out across Ben’s floor but with his legs up against one of the walls, and this is one of the times when Ben is very grateful that his brother abhors wearing shoes because otherwise, he would no doubt mark up the wall.

“What?” Ben asks though he knows exactly what Klaus means. It’s hard not to know when he has the left bottom flap of the poster turned up, the number 2 pencil in his hand, carefully making the new mark right next to the one before, clustering them in groups of six before marking the seventh diagonally through them. It’s not the standard way of counting things off, he knows. Most people would work in clusters of five, but there are not five of them. There are seven; seven feels better. 

Klaus looks over at him, lifts a leg off the wall to gesture with it toward Ben and his very meticulous counting. “That. The thing you’re doing. Right now. What is that?”

“Oh, this,” Ben says as though it’s a surprise, as though he hadn’t noticed even as he finishes and then lets the book list poster settle back against the wall, secures it with a thumbtack.

His brother hums in agreement, not having forgotten yet, his attention not having been drawn away by something else.

Ben could wait. If he waits long enough, Klaus will inevitably find something else to fixate on because that’s just how his mind works, always moving, always distracted. Ben can’t really blame him, doesn't think he would want to know what it would be like to be Klaus, people constantly wanting his attention. Dead people, Ben corrects himself, frowns. Dead people want his brother’s attention. Dead people come to him at night, wake him up, scream or whisper in his ear, demand he does things for them, that he listens. So much unfinished business. So many injuries. All of them have gotten used to the sounds of Klaus’ screams when he’s woken in the middle of the night. All of them have gotten used to him knocking after bedtime, slipping in, occupying himself with whatever he can find. Klaus has said it’s easier to deal with them if he’s awake. The dark circles under his eyes never go away, and Pogo and Mom both pass him coffee when they think Father isn’t looking. Klaus is sleep deprived and hyper-caffeinated and his attention span is short. 

Really, it’s not fair to wait him out. It’s not fair to take advantage of the fact that he is pulled in so many directions that secrets can be kept simply because he cannot remember to focus. 

Ben shrugs and touches the poster, smoothing its edge even though it doesn’t need it. Everything in his room is prim, clean, perfectly in place not just because that’s what Father wants but also because he prefers it. It’s not like Klaus’ room, covered with magazine clippings of celebrities and rock stars and a set of Christmas lights he smuggled in from somewhere to twine around his headboard. Light doesn’t keep the ghosts away. They all know that by now, but Klaus still tries things, ever hopeful. 

“I don’t know,” Ben says after another moment because Klaus’ eyes are on him and his leg is still extended toward the poster, which means he’s still on that topic. 

“You don’t know?” Klaus settles his leg back on the wall and then pushes off the wall so that he can tumble in an inelegant roll toward where Ben sits down on the edge of the bed. 

Sometimes Ben wonders why they bring Klaus on missions with them. He’s practically as much a target as Vanya. Klaus fights poorly. His reflexes are strange because he’s always distracted. There are not always ghosts around to give him clues on things. He cannot really protect himself. It would make more sense to let him stay at home with Vanya, but Ben doesn’t think Klaus would like that. Not really. He wouldn’t either if he’s honest. Klaus keeps the mood elevated, which is something. And he holds Ben’s hand during the trips out and back again. Even when Ben is covered in blood. Even if Ben is crying.

“No,” Ben says, shrugs again because what else is he supposed to do. “I just started them. One day. I just. I wanted to.”

“You just wanted to count down the days?”

“Sure.”

“Weird.”

“You’re one to talk,” Ben says, not that he means anything by it, not really, but Klaus is. Well. Klaus is unabashedly weird. When allowed to be, which isn’t easy for him or for any of them. Father is pretty determined about some things, like how they need to match, like how they need to look immaculate, like how Klaus is not supposed to be stealing clothing from Vanya and Allison just because he likes the skirts better. That is, decidedly, not the sort of activity that a member of the Umbrella Academy should be engaging in. But Ben doesn’t mean weird in the same way that their father does. He doesn’t mean deviant. He doesn’t mean bad. He just means. Klaus is Klaus. Klaus is weird. Like how Luther is the leader. Like how Allison is perfect. Like how Diego is determined, and Five is sarcastic, and Vanya is alone. And he is. He is. 

He is not enough, which feels like a hole in his chest, something bigger and stranger than what he can do. He is not enough. He can do so much but none of it ever seems to please anyone. Especially himself. And Ben doesn’t know why.

As though feeling the change in the air, the shift of emotion in the room, Klaus looks around and then gets up, carefully sorting through Ben’s neat piles so that he can investigate without upsetting everything. In his own room, with his own things, Klaus doesn’t particularly care, but he makes an effort with the others for their comfort. His nails have been painted black again, and Ben doesn’t see any chips or blemishes in the coating, which indicates that it’s relatively fresh. “Ben,” Klaus draws his name out into a whine, “there’s never anything interesting in here.”

“There’s tons of interesting stuff in here.”

“No, there’s just your weird countdown that you won’t even explain to me.” Throwing his arms out, Klaus flops onto the empty space on Ben’s bed, jolting him slightly with the impact. That’s the other thing about Klaus, he is constantly seeking contact, comfortable with encroaching into the rest of their space even when Diego threatens him with knives or Five pushes him away or Allison rumors him off things she thinks he might get dirty. 

Ben just rolls his eyes and makes a little more room, which Klaus immediately fills. Klaus is skinny, all elbows and knees, taller than Ben but slighter. Boney, Mom will say about Klaus, with a smile as she mends clothing he’s torn before Father sees it so that Father will not punish him again. 

Ben strives to never do anything that will result in Father punishing him. Training is bad enough; he does not know if he could endure punishment. Whenever Klaus talks him into doing something that will not be viewed well, he promises to take the blame if they’re caught. He’s used to it, he’ll say, he can take it. It’s fine. Ben lets him. He hates himself for it, but he lets him because it’s Klaus, and his brother is many things that are annoying, but he is protective and he is willing to be the one that all the punishments get heaped on. He and Diego are both good at that, taking the blame, taking the fall. Luther and Allison are too good, never seem to do anything bad. The rest of them, well. The rest of them, as Father says, leave something to be desired.

“I can’t explain it to you if I don’t know what it is,” Ben states when Klaus seems to have finally settled down, at least for the moment. He’s draped over the edge of the bed, his head hanging, his face getting red from all the blood rushing into it. He says it’s harder for the ghosts to talk when the blood is pounding in his ears. Sometimes Ben worries about what other distractions Klaus will find to save himself from them.

That’s another thing that Ben knows Father doesn’t like about him, how much he worries. Over everything. Mom says that he is sensitive only she doesn’t mean it in the way that people mean it when they say it about Klaus. She means it in a way where it’s a word she cannot say in front of Father or in front of the rest of them, except maybe Klaus, who will smile and then inevitably forget, and Vanya, who is viewed in the house most of the time as nothing at all so no one ever cares what they say in front of her.

“I don’t understand how you don’t know why you’re doing something,” Klaus says and then sits up for a moment, tapping the fingers of his right hand with his left as though counting something down himself, as though trying to follow the point of his own statement.

Ben shrugs and lies down, folds his hands behind his head, looks up at the ceiling, which is covered in the glow in the dark stars that Klaus put there so their rooms would match in some way and to break up the darkness a little bit. Light may not keep the ghosts away, but it can help make Klaus feel better about them. Sometimes. Sometimes, when they appear all Klaus can do is hold his hands over his face and shake his head, and he refuses to tell any of them what he has seen, but Ben’s thought about it. People don’t always die peacefully, and he imagines that his brother knows that better than most. 

“I don’t know, Klaus. It just felt like something to do. I guess.” Ben knows it’s not a good answer, that it’s barely even an answer at all, but it’s all he has to give. In this, as in so many things, he manages, once again, to be a disappointment. Sometimes, he thinks he’s counting down the days until he’s old enough to leave the house of his own volition, an adult, a real person who can make real decisions. Sometimes, he thinks he’s counting up the number of horrors that live within his skin. Sometimes, he thinks maybe he’s just counting the days he manages to see in case they stop. 

“If you need something to do,” Klaus shifts around and then lays down beside him, “I can think of better things than writing on the wall. Or reading all those books.” 

Ben turns onto his side, and his brother rolls onto his own so that they are face to face. Klaus’ skin is pale white, the shadows under his eyes dark, his hair beginning to curl a little in the telltale sign that it will need to be cut again soon. Klaus smiles but does not look happy, and Ben smiles back even though he knows that he will not look happy. There’s not a lot of happiness here at the Umbrella Academy. “What sorts of things do you want to do?” Ben asks.

“Oh.” Something in Klaus’ face lights up a little. “Well. I think we should sneak out and go bowling. Or to get donuts. The coffee there is good, you know. It’s not as good as what Mom makes, but it’s okay. And the donuts are also good, of course, but you know that.”

Ben frowns, reminded of the time they used up their combined birthday money to buy dozens of donuts, and then gorged themselves on them. He was sick the rest of the night from the custard-filled, which was how they discovered his lactose intolerance. His stomach lurches at the thought. “I don’t want donuts.”

“No,” Klaus says, touches his chin thoughtfully, which is a relatively minor tic considering it’s him. “You never do, anymore.”

“Surprise,” Ben mutters. “The bowling alley is closed this late.” Neither of them are any good at bowling anyway, but it’s still fun, especially if they can get the others to go. Diego’s the best, of course, and then Allison. Luther is actually the worst at it, which frustrates their nigh-perfect brother to no end. Still, neither of those things are going to work now, in the middle of the night, when the rest of the house is still and quiet around them.

Klaus weaves a hand in the air above them like it’s a bird before he settles it down on his side. “Will you tell me _The Hobbit_ again?”

Sighing, Ben rolls onto his back because it’s more comfortable. This is another thing Klaus does, especially to him, asks him to recite books aloud instead of reading them himself. Klaus can read, but sometimes the words seem to get away from him, jumble up and frustrate him or he just can’t concentrate, reads the same sentence ten times, gets so worked up he cries in frustration. It’s easier if Ben just tells him; Ben, who feels like he has read practically everything in the entire house, Ben who will sneak off to the library and check out the limit from his and Klaus’ cards combined. 

“I’ve told you that one, like, fifteen times,” Ben grouses, not really complaining too much about it, though. 

Klaus hums and runs a hand through his hair, pulling at the ends as though he can convince the curls right out. “It’s that or _The Neverending Story_ and your German isn’t good.”

“Neither is your Korean.”

“My Korean is better than your German.” Klaus points out. Rightly.

Ben sighs and swears in Korean just for effect.

Klaus’ laughter is a bloom of joyous sound in the dark and then he replies with a German curse of his own.

Shoving an elbow into his brother’s side, Ben shakes his head. “I have to learn the normal way.” He has seen Klaus conjure spirits simply to ask them to teach him things, anything from history to languages to music theory. It can be incredibly frustrating, but Ben still doesn’t think he’d trade powers with his brother if he could.

“Yeah, well.” There’s the shift in the mattress as Klaus shrugs. “I’d learn the normal way if I could.”

Ben forgets that he seems to be the only one who notices Klaus’ trouble with reading, though he’s surprised Mom or Pogo haven’t figured it out. Mom works so hard to help Diego with his speech that he knows she would be equally concerned about Klaus. If he’d let her. That’s the problem with Klaus; he’d rather keep them happy, keep them laughing at him than let them help him. 

“I like chaos,” Klaus will say when Ben asks him about it.

You like joy, Ben thinks. You like joy even when there is none around to find so you make your own in any way you can. 

“So,” Klaus says, shifts, turns onto his back and scoots closer until his head is settled on Ben’s shoulder because that’s how he likes to listen to stories, “ _The Hobbit_?”

Ben settles his hands on his chest, careful not to disturb Klaus, and begins, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” His voice carries into the night, and he does not stop reciting until he knows that Klaus is well and truly asleep. If his brother wakes him, several hours later, screaming, he doesn’t hold a grudge. 

***

According to Five, there are only days until the Apocalypse. 

Ben is sitting on his bed only that is not exactly true because he is not, technically, real. He is just a spirit who has nowhere else to go, who will not find anywhere else to go because who will look after Klaus then? Certainly not their other siblings who are immersed in their own disasters as always. 

He sighs, but it is a sigh with no real breath just like he is sitting on the bed with no real weight. He sits and sighs because it is a habit, because it is a memory, like how he still knows how to throw a punch or somersault. 

Klaus is standing by the side of the bed, chewing on a hangnail, looking agitated but not quite as high as normal. His eyeliner is smeared, and he has been crying. The corner of the poster is turned up, held back with the same thumbtack that Ben used to use to hold it down, to hide the rows of marks, seven at a time. 

“You kept it up,” Ben says, which he already knew, of course, because he has been with Klaus since he died, but the countdown is not something they’ve talked about. Until now.

Klaus shrugs, digs his hands in his hair, turns away, turns back again, constantly moving. “Yeah. I just. I probably missed some.” He squints at the marks as though he is trying to count them, and then shakes his head again. “I’m sure I missed some. There can’t be enough days. I thought. You know. You had to have been doing it for a reason. I didn’t want to stop until I knew why. So I’ve just filled it in when I could.

If he could, this is where Ben would like to reach out and grab his brother’s arm, make him just fucking stop for a moment because he’s a little bit like an out of control top. “So, now it’s a countdown to the Apocalypse.”

“No,” Klaus sighs. “Yes.” He shrugs. “I don’t know.” He digs his hands into the pockets of pants that are so tight Ben doesn’t know how he can possibly even get his fingers into them.

Ben hums and looks at the marks. It’s obvious where his end and Klaus’ began because the neatness goes to utter shit at a certain part. The lines are crooked, all over the place, uneven, and several of them look smudged. The first one, the first one Klaus ever did, is scrawled not in pencil but in something ominously colored, and Ben is glad he cannot touch it, worried it would flake off like dried blood has the tendency to do. “Shit,” Ben says in Korean.

Without missing a beat, Klaus says, also in Korean, “Shit, indeed,” then, switching back to English, “What’s wrong anyway?”

“I thought it would be a countdown to something good is all. I wanted it to be. I had. I had hoped.” It feels like a small child’s wish. It feels like the wish of a person who had lived a life other than this one. He should have known, really. He should have known nothing would be so easy.

“Who said the end of the world is a bad thing?” Klaus asks, weirdly chipper because it is him, and he pulls at the ends of his hair as though he can force the curls out, that same gesture from childhood.

Ben wishes he could hug him. Ben wishes he could punch him. “Everyone. Always.”

“No,” Klaus stretches the word out. “Just your books.” Then he flops onto his back on the bed being careful not to crowd into Ben’s space. It can’t be terribly comfortable; it’s just a twin bed, after all, and plumes of dust puff into the air. “I think it’ll be long overdue quiet.”

When Ben looks at him, Klaus has closed his eyes, but he is not smiling. “Everyone will be dead.”

“Right,” Klaus says, opens his eyes, and they’re wet. It seems like his brother is always three minutes away from crying. Or singing. The drugs make it harder to tell. “You won’t be alone anymore.”

“I’m not alone now.”

Klaus laughs but there’s no mirth in it, which hurts Ben because he remembers a night many years ago, the sound of Klaus’ laughter like a firework blooming. “No, you’re not, but I am horrendous company.”

“Mostly to yourself,” Ben says and shifts slightly closer. He cannot touch his brother. He has tried because he thinks it would be beneficial. Klaus is still a tactile person now locked into a world where even fewer people will touch him. 

Klaus covers his face, and Ben thinks maybe he is crying, now. “Ah, well. It is what it is.”

Were they ten, Klaus would settle his head onto Ben’s shoulder. Were they ten, Ben would recite books into the night. Were they ten, they might look up at the stars on Ben’s ceiling together while Ben told Klaus the proper constellations they had put there and Klaus came up with ones of his own. Were they ten, Ben would be breathing. 

They are not ten. Ben is dead. His countdown has become one for the end of the world. His brother is even more broken and sadder than normal. There is no peace. There is no point. He feels useless and worthless again. Klaus turns his head and shimmies sideways just a touch. If Ben were alive, the top of his brother’s head would touch his folded leg. 

“This inscription could be seen on the glass door of a small shop, but naturally this was only the way it looked if you were inside the dimly lit shop, looking out at the street through the plate-glass door,” Ben begins because he remembers it, though not in German. He still remembers it, and maybe it will soothe. A little bit.

He tries not to pay attention to the way his brother cries, especially when he gets to the part about the rock giant.


End file.
